The Idea Swap | Hacker News Reader

The Idea Swap

theideaswap.com

46 pointsTichy30 comments

I spent 5 minutes typing in a thoughtful idea and making it fit within 150 characters and got back "eat vegemite and cheese" - I feel like I got punk'd.

I wish I had read your comment first. I had the same experience, except I got "rob a bank" in return. On the upside, it reminded me that I had Justified recorded on my DVR.

"If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them."

Just clicking and swapping the idea isn't terribly interesting. Instead of seeing their ideas, I'd like to know what other people think of my idea.

I want to make a sticky note, and let other people comment on it, maybe by letting them post smaller sticky notes beside it, or underneath it. Then I'd like to come back tomorrow and see everyone else's notes splattered all over the page.

So in the past few days we've seen three sites that have very similar meta-ideas. http://captainobvio.us/ was posted recently, I've been working on http://cluedb.com/ and now this one. There are also much-older ideas like http://halfbakery.com/ and http://fmylife.com etc. They all have various sets of snippet posting, user rating, commenting, etc. I wonder if this is an emerging trend?

This would be a bit more beneficial to me if my idea could bounce around getting feedback and other ideas on it. Or a searchable feature to find all ideas about x. Say I am good at arts and crafts but can't think of anything to make, i'd like to be able to search and find ideas.

"A film where humans and clouds are at war. The clouds float down, picking up children and dropping them to their deaths."

Sounds like "Billy's Balloon" by Don Hertzfeld.

So the value proposition I see is that I input a valid business idea that I was researching 2 years ago and got inputs from 4th graders. Totally will use it again.

What percentage of users input garbage just to hit the "swap" button?

From clicking around it seems like probably >75%

This reminds me a lot of http://www.halfbakery.com/ which is another website where you can share random ideas, mostly half baked ones :P

chatroulette in text. How is this any more interesting than browsing all twitter feeds simultaneously?

There should be some verification/filter. Lot of users will enter just anything to see the idea.

Registration/Login will discourage users to use the site, so I recommend better filter out the ideas in backend. i.e. do not put them in the swap list unless verified.

cute idea. add rating/liking of ideas... the top list might surface some interesting ones.

"Service to buy all food required for a recipe delivered to your door. Food blog integration. Celebrity chefs. Food subscriptions. Author commission."

Maybe if you can add a login and also a way to track and get feedback on an idea. Maybe someone is already working on it and would love an extra hand.

I love this! Tip: the swap button for me, in Chrome/Mac, is hard to use (seems to be a small clickable area). Awesome execution of a simple idea. (:

Reminds me of my hour long project when I was bored: http://whatshouldifuckingdo.com

Crying out for categorisation, but I like that you must contribute to participate and the simplicity works for it too.

This is like staring into the abyss. i couldn't help myself from constantly clicking the swap button.

This is strangely addictive.

Found it odd how often it mentioned the linkedin API.

The Idea Swap = INteractSPIRATION?

I got an amusing "get naked now"

my idea is the one about the dynamic music, if anyone happens to see it.

If you want some feedback you could just post it here ^^.

"Pre-pealed bananas" +1

Sounds like a "ringing" endorsement :-)

cool, but I can only type in the initial idea? I can't swap then type new the swap etc...

You can trick it by reloading the page :-)

"...continue swapping until you get the idea you actually want."

Looks like this is an intended use case. They should maybe make it easier to do.

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